“Within ten to fifteen years, the typical U.S. mall, unless it is completely reinvented, will be a historical anachronism—a sixty-year aberration that no longer meets the public’s needs, the retailers’ needs, or the community’s needs.”

“The 1939 painting, called Sport, was used as one of the many Saturday Evening Post covers for which the artist is well-known. It sold last spring for more than $1 million at an auction in New York and disappeared later last year” – in Queens, yet again.

“If only Americans loved science a little more, the thinking goes, we could end our squabbling about climate change, clean energy, evolution, and funding NASA and the National Science Foundation. These are high hopes to pin on a television show, even one as glorious as Cosmos.”

Avoid, please, all metaphors of plays or films as “pinnacles” or “peaks”; treat with absolute scorn the word “definitive”; and if anyone uses the word “masterpiece,” they don’t know what they’re doing. The pursuit of perfection is a mug’s game.

“There is this weird thing where having a little bit of resources is worse than having none. Or: having a few numbers of options is worse than having no options. It can be freeing to be at the very bottom.”

“Permitting photography led to constant tension between those who wanted a clear view for their camera and those who wished to look at the paintings. Many also insisted on photographing their companion or themselves in front of a picture. This led to numerous complaints from other visitors.”

“So now that we know that it’s possible to deliver books like magazines, to sell them like magazines, and to target them at clusters of readers like magazines, the big question looms: Do book enthusiasts actually want to engage with literature the way they engage with magazines? And can they afford to?”

“This talented orchestra and Vänskä, who resigned as a show of support for his players, have almost come to represent a blue-collar crew who took on the elite in the city. But now with deadlines looming and the newfound attention the orchestra is receiving, there’s also a new pressure on the board to act.”

Blair Tindall’s memoir turned into an Amazon.com series. “Amazon Studios has settled on four series orders among the 10 pilots the company announced last month were under consideration, according to sources close to the deals.”

With the London-based company about to begin a two-year global tour of Hamlet that they hope will include every nation on Earth, Amnesty International has given them a scolding for including Kim Jong Un’s domain on the itinerary. Mark Lawson considers the precedent – the long boycott of apartheid-era South Africa – and whether the situations are comparable.

We Will Rock You, “which has been seen by more than 6.5 million people at the cavernous Dominion theatre, will close on 31 May 2014. It will have run for a total of 4,600 performances, with an annual average of 600,000 tickets sold.”

“The same recession that brought misery to tens of thousands of families since 2009 has fueled demand for tales out of Greece — prompting the nation’s filmmakers not only to adapt to the new economic realities but also rack up awards in the process.”

“The funding we allocate to the humanities through our government has never come close to the value the humanities add to individual lives and to the life of our nation. Even in times of austerity, especially in times of austerity, sound investments must be made.”

Instead of referring to the electronic console as “television,” the group now embraces a more inclusive moniker — television means programming — in a nod toward the rise of disruptive new digital programmers, including Netflix.

“The basic idea is that every word you say represents a choice. So when you speak, you’re making a million choices that you’re not aware of. The differences aren’t meaningful to the speaker.” But they are meaningful to a program that can catalogue and index all the possible options.